I’ve moved on from Call of Duty to Killzone Mercenary. Since CoD was my first FPS I pretty much thought it was great. While I still think it’s a great addition and it seems that sales are finally picking up since they drastically reduced the price, it definitely under delivers on the VITA’s promise. Killzone Mercenary definitely delivers as a solid FPS. I enjoyed the single player campaign a lot and was able to complete it at various levels from novice to veteran in a reasonable amount of time.

After running through the campaign several times I finally ventured into multi-player and all I can say is that playing against human players is a different beast. I’m pretty much dead meat and it seems that the most difficult of settings in the single campaign is poor preparation for the multi-player experience.

Suddenly, I was lost and slow while opponents take me out like a clay pigeon from every angle. My reaction is woefully slow and it feels like I’m moving in a freeze frame mode while the enemies are psychic. Now I know that in theory I need to work on my reflexes (to max out what’s left of any minor genetic potential), to know the maps (especially the nooks where people can camp or sneak up on you), and improve accuracy (even when I get the jump on someone, missing a headshot gets you killed).

I avoided playing multi-player after several disasterous forays in CoD. In retrospect, that was stupid because no matter how much you suck, you can only improve. Right now I play on team matches knowing full well that I give a significant competitive advantage to the opponent. I’m also playing some rhythim games (DJMAX on the vita) to improve accuracy and timing (which seems to help quite bit) and also playing more multi-player.

Despite the difficulties, it’s given new life to the game. Seeing how it’s missing the hostile mode (my favorite feature in CoD where enemies are spawned in infinite waves until you die—even though you can go on forever by camping), it’s turning out to be a blessing because I need to venture into multi-player to get that thrill. Killzone Mercenary just has better graphics and feels more like a proper shooter.

I just wish the PS VITA had more shooter games and proper franchise titles to choose from. One great thing about the PS4’s successful launch is that the PS VITA is getting attention as an accessory to the PS4 since it allows you to remotely play PS4 titles right on your VITA. It helps you avoid fighting for the TV and is just convenient because you can play games anywhere in the house. It’s made the VITA like the tablets (which are popular for web browsing around the house) of the gaming world.

In other news, any Playstation owner should definitely subscribe to PS Plus since you get free games every month for less than $5 per month. I’ve gotten Gravity Rush with this and have a bunch of games should I ever buy a PS3. While I enjoyed Gravity Rush, I would have never bought it for full price or a discount even though I enjoyed the unusual game play. I look forward to playing more games that I would otherwise not buy. Also, the ability to back up 1GB of game save data to the cloud lets you manage precious space on the VITA without connecting to a PC.

In addition to shooters I’m playing action games, racing games and some RPGs. I’m not sure gaming is doing anything significant to improve my abilities but I do notice some things.

Mundane tasks like shopping are more fun when you think of it as a game.

I’m more adept at navigating through crowds.

I notice more subtle movements and am more aware of my environment without being more jumpy.

I can remeber a random set of numbers longer (not sure where that came from).

Faster at routine tasks and more likely to react quicker at critical moments.

Only time will tell if there are any spillovers into life and most of this might just be placebo but at the end of the day, I enjoy playing these games and that’s good enough. Despite all the negative press and bad reputation games have with parents, games are really beneficial for a wide demographic (in moderation and balance). For older adults games help to keep your reaction times sharp and fulfill competitive urges that are either overlooked or crushed in every day life (you just can’t take out your boss with a headshot and dance over his corpse).

In recent years lots of journalists and bloggers made a big deal about smartphones displacing console games. The amazing success of GTA V (reaching a billion dollars faster than the movie Avatar) and the successful launch of the PS4 (not to mention anticipation for Xbox One) is indication that gaming is far from dead. Although PS VITA sales may seem dissappointing despite great graphics and PS3-level power, you just can’t beat a dedicated game machine with physical controls when it comes to the gaming experience. I do think that handheld consoles must compete at some level with smartphones and tablets (who wants to carry yet another device). However, the casual games with touch controls on the handheld are completely different beasts (despite some titles making unbelievable amounts of money, like Candy Crush and Clash of the Clans).

Personally, I think smartphone games will eventually spark more interest in consoles (that’s certainly how I found myself meandering back to gaming after a very long hiatus). Console games are far from a dying art. Blockbuster game titles are becoming a cultural force in their own right (great storytelling combined with a player’s ability to interact with the environment is a very powerful experience that no movie can ever replicate, not to mention that game graphics are rapidly approaching Hollywood level fidelity). Also, the median age of games is now in the 30s. That means more disposable income and kids. The current generation of young parents most likely grew up on games and do not have the same hangups about games in letting their children play. It’s just that game developers and console manufacturers need to be aware of the bigger picture (social sharing, downloadable content, etc.) in creating a more compelling experience.

There’s a lot of life lessons in first person shooters like Call of Duty. I’ve been playing a lot in between tasks. It’s great for procrastination! I’m not even above average mind you, but coming late to the party there’s a lot of things I can appreciate. Even if the benefits of playing FPS games turns out to be bunk, it’s a great way to take a break. Maybe even too much.

There’s so much you can learn from this game that applies to life.

Try Not to Die

If you die, that’s it. You can’t go further. Your kill streak ends and the mission is not accomplished. You can take some hits but before you go further you need to recover by either hiding or neutralizing the immediate threat. When you get splattered your mobility is limited. Plus getting shot messes up your aim. You need to know which risks are worth taking and assess the trade off of making yourself vulnerable and making a good shot.

Dying Isn’t a Big Deal

So you die. Now what? Play it again! Just because you get shot up doesn’t mean you can never play again. Now in life dying is a big deal but how many things really matter that much in life? There are millions of people killing others or killing themselves for things that in the grand scheme of things aren’t that big of a deal. Lost a job? Broke up with someone that you thought was “the one”? Company went belly up? The list goes on. These are challenges and not life or death situations. There is a way to recover or at least continue to fight the fight. This time take a little something from your last fight and try not to die the same way.

Prioritize

When you’re playing a shooter, you’re faced with lots of choices. You need to choose wisely while getting shot at and/or trying to achieve a mission. You’ll frequently be in a situation where you ask yourself, “do I shoot this guy first or try to pick up the ammo?”, “three hostiles, one behind me, which do I shoot first?”, or “do I throw the last grenade to get out of this bind or try to plough through?”. You can die from making retarded choices like trying to pick up some ammo or not paying attention to someone creeping up behind you. These are all choices. Each choice will affect the next choices available.

You might find yourself shooting at a cluster of enemies while keeping an eye on the map to see hostiles coming at you while the clock is running. You need to figure it out quick!

Don’t Give Up

So you got cornered in a bad place and there’s a whole family of enemies coming at you like zombies and yes you’re running low on ammo. At some point you need to pick up one of their guns and do something if you manage to handle the first five. Now, it’s not a big deal to die in game. You just play it again. However, the whole point of the game is to give it your best. You need to take the game seriously for it to mean anything. “It’s just a game” is a great way to move on but don’t ever let that be an excuse to failure. Many times you’ll find yourself in a bind but manage to find a way out or maybe learn a lesson that will help you avoid getting in that situation to start with. When the situation gets overwhelming try to get out of it somehow. Embrace the adversity. If you fail, do it again but do your best to get out.

Stay Alert

Sometimes you’ll get through a really difficult patch relatively unscathed only to get shot up by some weak loner who was right in front of you. These lapses can come in hairy times or long stretches of waiting. You need to keep yourself alert and at least prepared to respond. Zoning out is rarely a good thing. The game will teach you how to maintain a flow.

Shoot First, Ask Later

If you see an enemy, shoot. If you see a funny shadow, shoot. If you hear something, shoot. There’s rarely a moment where it’s better idea to contemplate the situation. If you don’t know what to do at least run. You always need to be doing something. There’s no way to just sit still and not die.

Set the Tone, Stay in Charge

It sucks to be chased around and running all the time. It’s a lot better to manipulate the enemy and get them in the right position to blast away. As long as you’re the one reacting, eventually they’ll get to you. This is especially true in hostile/survival mode.

Know the Territory

The more you know about the map or sticking points in the mission, the better. Same goes for the guns and their quirks and advantages. Ditto for enemies and their movements. Find an angle that will give you an advantage, sometimes it’ll be a nook where you can take the heat off or a maze-like area you can run and lose your enemies. This knowledge will give you an edge.

Always Have Fun

At the end of the day, it’s about having fun. Shoot em’ up and laugh a little. Don’t get beat up if things don’t go your way. If you get a little bored switch it up. Put yourself in a bit of danger and try to maneuver your way out. Set tougher constraints on yourself and set goals. If all you get is stress then it’s time to quit and find something else. Sometimes I’ll get a chuckle from the dumbest bugs like an enemy running in mid air or their bodies half hidden by a dry wall.

I’m sure there are some others I missed but the fast pace of the game and the high pressure environment provide a great way to release stress while maybe learning a lesson or two about life.

Anyone who uses email often enough at some point in life will eventually struggle with handling an ever growing collection of email. Email bankruptcy is a very real prospect. My email address is literally a blackhole where lots of messages go to die. Thanks to the “all you can eat buffet” approach to email storage pioneered by Gmail, I never worried once about managing the crazy collection of text. The best features of Gmail are massive storage, filters, search, and labels/folders all in the cloud.

However, ask yourself what happens to your email when things go bad? With Google Reader shutting down, it can’t hurt to have a backup plan. What’s more since your Gmail is tightly integrated with everything else Google owns, any service violation may put all your data at risk. Although unlikely, there are people who got their accounts shutdown due to mixups of one kind or another. Google’s customer support is notoriously slow not to mention the challenge of finding a channel to communicate with them.

The advantages of having a copy of your email on your hard drive not only gives you peace of mind but can also make you more productive when combined with old school email clients like Mutt or Alpine. Marissa Mayer, the CEO of Yahoo, plows through her email with Pine.

Having your email offline allows you to take your email with you on your laptop without worrying about a connection. Read and respond on the train or in a cafe and when you get a connection it’ll all sync up. Another advantage is the search. You can combine it with local search engines to find the emails you need fast or create “smart lists” for email that meets a certain criteria to stay on top of things.

Handling your email in a no frills environment can really help you with staying focused. As we all know, using the web interface of anything can lead us to lots of distractions.

Getting Your IMAP Offline

The great thing about IMAP is that all your folders and messages reside on the server/cloud. This means that no matter what client you set up, everything will be sorted nice and neatly. However, with the typical setup, you need to have a persistent connection since messages are more or less a temporary cache.

So, to get around this, there are several solutions out there to get your email into a Maildir. With a Maildir, basically all the folders on the IMAP server become a folder on your disk and each message resides in its own text file with a unique filename and various flags indicating the state (unread, starred, etc.). The most popular of these is OfflineIMAP. OfflineIMAP is written in Python and will pretty much run on any platform. There are other delivery agents as well. I’ve mostly used OfflineIMAP until now but it does have some issues. My biggest problem with OfflineIMAP is that near the tail end of syncing my email, it just becomes this monster of a process that eats an endless supply of RAM (I’m talking GBs and some CPU spikes). It would be dangerous to leave it running as I’d have to restart my mac due to having no RAM. It was just getting crazy.

Recently, I migrated to mbsync and I couldn’t be happier. It’s fast and efficient but consumes so little memory since it’s written in C and pretty sound in terms of design. Mbsync also offers a lot of granular controls so you can give certain folders higher priority and also perform particular operations like “pull new” messages. You can simply do “brew install isync” if you use homebrew on the mac or download the source here.

Once you get the program installed you need to configure it. I mostly followed the instructions here, the section on getting the security certificates and ignoring Gmail’s “All Mail” folder (which creates a lot of duplicates) was particularly helpful. This guide is really good for setting up channels so you can specify how you want to sync specific folders.

This can be done for any directory. Mbsync seems to go through all the folders in order so if there are particular folders you want to always have priority, setting up these channels will ensure that quick update is simply a command away.

mbsync important

You can setup a separate cron job since mbsync can have multiple processes accessing the same account. Incidentally with OfflineIMAP, the lock on an email account is global. This combined with excessive resource consumption and the fact that syncs never complete, meant I had to kill the process and start from the top (combined with the auto refresh, it was a bit of a nightmare).

Once you have the syncing setup (syncing will still take time depending on the size of your mailbox), all you need is a good software program to handle your email. You’ll be able to fly through the messages.

Personally, I use Emacs with mu/mu4e which is an awesome combination. Mu uses Xapian for fast and capable search capabilities which can be used like smart folders. There are several combinations out there for using Maildir and IMAP. Old school email clients might seem scary at first but once you get used to them, it’s fast and efficient.

So I’ve been playing CoD for the last couple of days, I think a week or so at least. Every time I get stuck on a level I just consult this guy’s videos. I’m getting mildly better at it, but still it’s just dismal. The levels or “operations” I have trouble on I basically get lucky more than anything.

The emotional reaction and adrenal rush to shooting and being shot has calmed down considerably. In addition I feel less pressure even during time constraints. I still get a kick out of it but it feels more subtle.

Other than that, I do feel more sensitive to moving objects when I’m out and about (pedestrians and cars). I’m not sure how this translates to anything else. One thing I like about games is the clear objectives and time constraints involved in the missions. There’s nothing like games to give you emotional incentives without financial or physical consequences when goals aren’t met. It’s all based on intrinsic motivation stemming from how much you care about getting better.

The funny thing about sequels is that they are rarely better than the original but generate more money. Hangover Part II is no exception but definitely worth watching. It’s hard to beat the original. Four guys wake up in Las Vegas after a bachelor’s party sans bachelor with the nastiest of hangovers and no recollection of the night before. All they have are hints of a truly wild night like a tiger in the bathroom and missing a tooth.

This time it’s Stu, the dentist, getting married in Thailand (where his beautiful fiance is from). Despite all the precautions they take, all of them wake up in a dirty hotel in Bangkok, miles away from the wedding, Stu has a Mike Tyson tattoo on his face, Alan’s head is shaved, and the only trace of the bride’s brother is his severed finger, complete with Stanford ring.

Despite all the rotten reviews from critics and the strong preconception that this film just shouldn’t work, it manages to hit all the right notes. Surprisingly, even though the plot follows the familiar template of the original, it’s got enough twists of originality to establish the film on its own. The most important aspect is that chemistry of Stu, Alan, and Phil can carry this franchise indefinitely.

I think the only test that matters for comedy sequels is will you get more laughs than re-watching the original? To that this film lives up to the promise.

Despite all the doomsday prophecies and user disgust, Windows isn’t really going anywhere. Sure, smart companies use Google Apps & Docs and/or LibreOffice unless they’re tied into legacy custom software or antiquated IT department policies but Microsoft still has most computer manufacturers firmly in their pocket. It’s really crazy when you think about it because when you look at any customization options for Dell or HP or any other commodity PC manufacturer, the amount of RAM you can install is dictated by the one of many confusing Windows OS options. If you want more than 4GB, you probably need Windows Vista 7 Ultimate Home Office Edition Deluxe.

I’ve been using a mac for a number of years and it’s been a pleasant journey for the most part. Leopard’s first release was really rocky but now that’s past. At first it was like walking into the promised land. An operating system that’s stable and looks good? What!? I didn’t even know what Linux was other than every now and then you had to fire up this mysterious old school application called the “terminal” and type cryptic commands into it. Everything you can possibly need was right there. However that was many years ago.

Now Apple is a music and phone manufacturer with a division that builds operating systems. Let’s face it, in terms of openness the order is Linux > Microsoft > Apple. Microsoft Windows will probably run on any hardware out there while OSX can only legally be run on the hardware they sell. Nobody thought that Apple could come back from the verge of death back in 1996 when Microsoft had to invest $500 million and even promise to provide mac users with a second-rate version of Internet Explorer and Office. That was probably the single most stupid decision Microsoft made in terms of strategy.

Nowadays I find that a similar feeling of disgust that drove me away from Windows is driving me to Linux, Ubuntu to be precise. I use Ubuntu at work and that means that I’m in it for most of my waking hours. I like the ability to just “apt-get install” my way to a complete environment. I can easily setup a new machine by copying over my home directory and re-installing all the packages I had on the old machine (just beware of those crazy graphics and network drivers that might wreak havoc on a non-compatible machine). Overall, I think Ubuntu visuals are more beautiful than anything on Microsoft, smooth fonts and colors that are easier on your eyes. Of course, there’s still a long way to go before Ubuntu can rival the visual beauty of OSX but to me the difference is more than made up for by the freedom and flexibility of Ubuntu.

Having said that, I still love my iPhone. I own a Nexus S, that’s supposedly at the pinnacle of Android right now and I really can’t see myself using it unless I have no choice. Because I love my iPhone so much that I still want to entertain the possibility of hacking on it. The only sane way to do it is with Apple’s Xcode. The app store is both a blessing and a curse to the industry. Apple lowered the barrier of entry for software development from business applications to games while making it possible to independent software developers to earn a decent living. The problem of open source software is not the lack of enthusiasm but the lack of money. Many open source programmers would be happy to live on less to hack on their favorite projects full-time. Unfortunately, most need a day job to pay the rent. Also, if they want to keep hacking away, they’re probably limited in choices of employment as well (although there are great companies that support open source like Google). You can’t deny that Apple really locked in a key advantage in using Objective-C for their platform. The Java Virtual Machine for all its virtues will never be on a par with ANSI C (which is what Objective-C is a thin wrapper for. This is apparent when developing programs for the iPhone because you can architect core components in C to get a performance boost in key bottlenecks. Sure, Java is great and less painful as long as you use Eclipse and Android is slowly adding native C code capabilities for development.

Developing for the iPhone is quite an empowering process until you have to submit your app and pray that you don’t get kicked in the teeth by an App store reviewer having a bad day.

However, it’s only a matter of time before these advantages wear off, at least for people like me. The package managers on OSX are nothing but cheap imitations of apt-get and none of them even come close. New kid on the block brew is all the rage right now but the recipes are little more than fancy shell scripts doing the typical “configure make install” dance, and taking just as long. Take a look at the common UNIX tools and you’ll see Apple lagging far behind. Sure tools like “ls” or “grep” aren’t likely to change much but there are many interesting cutting edge open source projects like the xapian search engine that are sorely missing. Stuff you can get for a simple command might cost you a couple hours on a Mac hunting down dependencies and tweaking build flags. When you decide to upgrade, good luck. This is even more critical for people doing web development. Unless you’re building simple, low traffic websites, it’s always better to be developing on an environment that’s close to production if not the same. Here’s where Ubuntu shines and it’s no wonder that a majority of Google engineers use their very own distribution based on Ubuntu.

It’s really sad that Apple continues to stray from their UNIX roots and the only reason why the company still exists today just to keep an iron grip on the platform in ways that make life harder for some people. Sure, the countless resources that went into the Cocoa APIs deserve to be protected, as they provide a key competitive advantage. However, sooner or later all operating systems regardless of platform are going to be commodities. I really don’t see the appeal of OSX any more aside from the fact that you can develop iPhone/Cocoa applications and the whole gamut of Adobe design software (although, those have serious issues).

I guess I’m just a bit depressed because I’m about to buy another Mac, because an upgrade is long overdue, mainly as a compromise (I can always rip out OSX or dual boot). In fact, I’ll probably buy another Dell afterwards to run a server at home and collect a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate. Buying a mac just doesn’t give me the same degree of pleasure it used to unless I pretend that the OSX is a freebie that comes with the hardware.

I think Paul makes a great point and kids that find their own way will be infinitely more happy to be in complete control of their destiny while excelling at their chosen calling. These are the ones that have a chance to be the next Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Larry Page, or Sergey Brin.

Mostly throughout history the creation of geniuses has been left to a series of happy accidents. Taking a systematic approach doesn’t necessarily create more geniuses. We all no that there is an unbreachable gulf between true geniuses and merely brilliant people. This is why environment can only go so far as you approach the limits of nature.

For most of written history, East Asia more or less took a rigid, factory approach to higher education. During the dynastic period of China, civil service exams characterized by memorization of ancient philosophical texts and the ability to compose poems in the classic style were what got you a job of power, riches and prestige for life. Reverence of your teacher was absolute. Countries like Korea and Japan more or less imported this style of education.

It’s no surprise that Asia got a rude wake up call when Western countries arrived on boats strapped with big guns, with superiority in every aspect of technology. You can’t advance knowledge without questioning your predecessors and going beyond your teachers. Once Asian countries realized that they were studying the wrong books, they certainly caught up fast but it’s wasn’t until the 20th century that Asia finally hit their stride, this time with Japan providing an educational model characterized by cram schools and rigorous college entrance exams (and also crazier civil service exams).

The greatest problem about this “Chinese parenting” style is that they’re equating parenting with a Spartan regimen of self-improvement forced on children. Naturally there are going to be children who are maxed out in terms of potential but are never going to realize the dreams and expectations of parents being forced on them. There are going to be children burnt out before they even leave high school. Brilliant people who struggle with psychiatric issues because they were brought up intellectually or artistically brilliant but stunted emotionally.

However, taking a systematic approach to training kids will naturally produce a more well-educated society. However, if you look at Japan, this approach is not bullet-proof and only works to a certain extent.

Japan as Number One

Post-war Japan’s rapid economic rise is just as much a triumph of the educational system. Even today, the population is highly literate and you’ll find much more people reading books on the trains (not just sleeping in public). Many children are raised to equate academic success with happiness and academic performance doesn’t make you an outcast or freak like many typical American schools (of course, the superior private schools suffer to a lesser extent). At one point during Japan’s history, mainly at the height of economic growth, academic competitiveness created a social problem of epic proportions as kids were trapped in a vicious cycle where you had to sacrifice all social and extracurricular activities, go to cram school after school, and memorize esoteric historical dates and facts, in addition to solve differential and integrals equations regardless of if you knew what any of it meant. Also, kids were forced to learn broken English from teachers who couldn’t communicate in English if their life depended on it and conjugate verbs and learn the meaning of various words that would appear on college entrance exams.

There was a noticeable backlash and textbooks were dumbed down but everything pretty much the same. Ironically, it also coincided with Japan’s economic decline. Sadly, it never occurred to the Ministry of Education, that as Japan reached economic maturity they needed to raise the quality of education rather than making the learning material easier as fertility rates dropped and politicians continued to mismanage the economy. Japan was long past the point where success could be measured in literate workforce willing to work long hours doing inefficient and repetitive work just like their student days.

Although the typical Japanese person, even with today’s declined standards, is relatively well-educated on average, Japan is currently suffering from “herbivores”, young people who have no direction or ambition. Of course, it comes as no surprise that several generations of absent fathers “willing to sacrifice their family for the sake of a company that’s tanking along with the rest of economy and all I got was this lousy house loan on a rabbit shack apartment” doesn’t exactly inspire children to rise to the task. The problem is that as the population declines and the economy continues to fall apart (even more under the incompetent new government), Japan is left with an over-supply of educational institutions. The country is rapidly approaching the point where anyone can advance to college just by graduating high school. You can be sure that standards will decline as third-rate colleges welcome students that would normally be considered dropouts for their own survival.

Despite decades of economic growth and high education standards (if we speak of averages), the flaws of the Japanese approach to education is none the more apparent in the way it has fallen apart much like the economy (There aren’t that many Japanese Nobel laureates despite the emphasis on math and science in the post war era. Also, a significant number of the laureates did their defining research in the states and continue to do so). It simply doesn’t work to mass produce education as industrialized nations transition to a knowledge, service economy.

Here Come the Koreans and Chinese

As Japan falls back, other Asian countries, are rising and many of these countries used the Japanese model as a point of departure when Japan was actually successful, including the education system. Now Japan provides an interesting case study as a train wreck that’s even more valuable so that they can avoid making similar mistakes.

It’s hard to deny that countries such as Korea and China are not only surpassing Japan but well on their way to leaving Japan very far behind. China is already the number two economy and will probably pass the United States in the next few years. Korean electronics are cutting edge and much more innovative and cheaper than Japan. Samsung surpassed Sony a long time ago and continues to grow.

Education in Korea and China is highly competitive and if standardized tests are to be believed, Shanghai is the world’s most competitive in terms of education.

There is no doubt that taking a systematic approach to education will produce results at the aggregate level. Despite the fact that Western educators have consistently criticized “rote memory” education as ineffective, they lose sight of the fact that for average students, this approach is be best for maximizing their potential. The problem is with elite education.

I don’t think Shanghai or any other Asian city (including India) will unseat American colleges as the center of learning any time soon (although eventually, America’s post 9/11 policies and declining education system will finish the job). There needs to be more freedom and intellectual initiative to really produce and attract the geniuses.

Smart people tend to flock to where other smart people are. Countries such as Germany and Hungary experience first-hand how delicate the balance is when they lost many of their most promising scientists when they started to pursue racist policies during World War II. Right now America is where you will find the best combination of quality academics, ample funding, and the closest thing to complete intellectual freedom that any smart person will find hard to resist. It remains to be seen if China and Korea can combine the best of “Chinese mothers” and the Western style.

Andrew Garfield does a masterful job playing Eduardo Saverin, Mark’s best friend and original partner, with just the right mix of boyish charm, nerdiness and flamboyance as the Brazilian-Jewish co-founder and initial investor of Facebook.

The film is as exciting as you can make the creation of a website thanks to all the betrayal mixed with Sean Parker’s import of drugs and sex. The story starts off with promise as Mark experiences an awkward and fatal conversation with his girlfriend that leads to the break-up that unleashes the rage that inspires him to create a site to rate the physical attractiveness of women.

The story starts to fall apart about the point where the site starts to take off and we see all Mark’s personal relationships disintegrate as he succeeds in turning Facebook into a global phenomenon. While there’s nothing unusual about someone being personally aloof and in many ways socially inept with running a company, it’s hard to see the film version of Mark Zuckerberg, played masterfully by Jesse Eisenberg, capable of running a company or even having a conversation. They could have given him more human characteristics or more things to say that enlighten us as to why he was so driven to turn Facebook into what it was.

Instead, we have a cold, unfeeling nerd that is savvy and ruthless schemer that is easily taken in by a paranoid, drug-taking snake oil salesman (at least as Sean Parker is portrayed in the movie) before screwing him too. So at least for me Eduardo was the emotional focal point of the entire film.

It was definitely a good movie with solid acting and they took as much creative liberty as they could without completely ruining the film while saving the audience from death by boredom. People in the IT industry will no doubt appreciate the little touches to maintain the film’s authenticity at least from a technical point of view.

Like all great things open source software started off with good intentions. I give, you give, we all give so the world can receive. The amazing thing about open source software is how far it’s come. Open source provides us the foundation for things we take for granted from programming languages, web servers, web frameworks, utilities, operating systems and much more. Lately it seems that open source contributions are dwindling no matter what metric you go by. The population of software engineers is surely increasing, though supply cannot keep up with the ever growing demand as our reliance on technology increases. I think the crisis facing open source contributions is a combination of many forces and not just a lack of commitment or passion (although it surely plays a role).

One factor is the lack of open problems or deficits. If you look at a lot of the innovations in open source coming out of Silicone Valley a lot of the problem domains involve cloud computing, big data, distributed memory, etc. These are problems that probably existed before but not on the scale we see now with the emergence of giants like Google and Facebook. Their requirements are coming hard up against the physical laws governing computers such as disk I/O. However, for the most part, the typical start-up can be bootstrapped by cobbling together open source offerings on a commodity server or better yet starting with a low budget shared hosting plan that gives you all the freedom of your own actual server with a fraction of the headaches.

A lot of the most pressing problems are solved for the majority of developers and even abstracted out into simple to use tools, libraries, or frameworks that most will not venture to peek under the hood because they can readily solve most issues by searching for the answer on-line. The wealth of information available and the collective experience gives little motivation for developers to look at the source code and figure things out for themselves or even try to make their own solution before resorting to the cheat sheet. This isn’t to say that the quality of developers is declining as a whole but like everything else in life I think we’re seeing a growing gulf between able hackers and your average corporate coder who will happily continue cranking out derivative works for the rest of their career (maybe not even learning more than one or two frameworks or languages).

Also, the state of many large, established open source projects make contributing hard (at least for new or non-hacker developers) with a large code-base and history. Getting familiar with such a project takes a serious commitment and might be beyond the scope of an enthusiast without some kind of guidance.

The more pressing issue of free software is that the law of economics is at work. The collective tip jar of open source will never meet the lofty ideals that open source promoters hope to live by. Open source software probably constitutes the purest form of public goods that even economists did not foresee when they came up with the concept. Open source software is nearly infinitely replicable and can be distributed at near zero costs. For all the contributions to open source there are much more free riders. So far, the only proposed solutions to come out of the community are trickier licences. Frankly, I think complex licencing only serves to steer companies away from using certain projects since it introduces legal liabilities or risks that management neither has the time or in some cases ability to properly evaluate.

The only long-term way to really keep contributions to open source vibrant is tax. Although the collection and distribution of such a tax would be hard to design and implement, it could be made simple with one clause: taxes can be paid in kind with open source contributions to recognized projects at a substantial bonus (similar to how donations to legitimate non-profit organizations can be deducted). Personally, I think it would be cool to have a quasi-public research lab completely dedicated to open source software development and supported entirely by such tax revenue and staff seconded from the best tech companies in lieu of monetary payment. It would be something like Google’s Summer of Code only 24/7 with experienced, full-time hackers.

If only politicians and bureaucrats would spend a fraction of the time and money spent thinking about how to protect corporate interests manifest in intellectual property and other copyright issues on the equally important task of fostering open intellectual contributions for the betterment of society, we wouldn’t have to worry about the state of open source software.

PS I realise that I’m using the concept of free software/open source interchangeably and it will rub some people the wrong way.